1. Field of the Invention
This relates to personal hygiene products used for personal care, primarily for absorption or containment of bodily fluid, and more particularly, to a personal hygiene product with a digital element that may be utilized to sense and wirelessly communicate discharge related data to the user via a smart hand held electronic device.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
The basic structure of a personal hygiene product has not varied greatly over time. The needs of users have also not varied: to prevent seepage onto the skin, clothing, or external environment through maximized absorption and predictability of the personal hygiene product's absorption capacity. Personal hygiene products include tampons; bed pads; disposable adult diapers; disposable adult briefs; disposable sanitary napkins, sanitary napkins with adhesive strips and wings; and panty liners. Most people will at some point in their life use a personal hygiene product for a period of time. Personal hygiene products historically involve a one-size-fits-all approach.
A woman, for example will use an estimated average of 10,000 personal hygiene products in a lifetime. Even though feminine hygiene products come in different sizes and shapes designed for varying absorbent capacity, no product is 100 percent effective in preventing spills or leakage because variance in menstruation may lead to oversaturation. Each woman's menstrual flow varies over the course of her menstruation, with some days being lighter or heavier than others. Because of menstrual variance, accidents or overflows may occur where the personal hygiene product becomes oversaturated and spills outside of the absorbent area. Continued use of an oversaturated hygiene product may lead to negative health impacts such as bacterial infections or toxic shock syndrome.
Many women manually track or monitor their menstrual cycle for predictability to avoid the unexpected start of menstruation in the absence of a personal hygiene product or accidents of the sort discussed above. There are over two hundred smart device applications available to monitor menstruation manually. Users enter data into the application on a smart device, for example a smart phone or other hand held device, and the application generates data predicting, for example, menstrual start day, flow pattern, and length of menstruation. Many of these smart device applications issue alerts when menstruation is expected to start and end. All available devices, however, rely on data based on the subjective and manual entry of the user and may not reliably meet the primary needs most female hygiene product users have: predictability and reliability. None of these applications are able to actively monitor the active absorption capacity of a personal hygiene product while a user is wearing or using it.
Personal hygiene products are also used, for example, by the elderly, injured, persons with disability, and persons with incontinence. Personal hygiene products may be used in a variety of settings: community, home, hospital, and nursing homes. In particular, hospitals and nursing home staff have limited resources to constantly monitor patients or residents who wear a personal hygiene product. The result is that patients and residents risk prolonged wear of a hygiene product that may result in sores or infection. Additionally, most hospitals and nursing homes are equipped with a lift team or machine to facilitate changing a personal hygiene product for a person who is not mobile. However, there may only be one lift team or machine per facility. As a result, a staff person changing a personal hygiene product alone risks injury on the job. The nursing and personal caretaker professions have the highest rates of injury resulting from on-the-job lifting because of individually lifting and maneuvering a patient's or resident's body to change a personal hygiene product during the course of periodic checks during their shift.
Current efforts to monitor personal hygiene products in the settings above rely on periodic check and patient report. There is a need for hospitals and nursing homes to have real-time data and information in order to more efficiently respond to, for example, a personal hygiene product change, with adequate resources. Such a response will reduce injury and increase health safety for both the patient/resident and staff.
In addition to the need for predictability and reliability in use of a personal hygiene product, a personal hygiene product is situated either proximate to or inserted into the body and as a result is able to collect data about patterns of discharge and biometrics in a way that a manual-entry application is unable to capture. This data is beneficial, to avoid social embarrassment, and also for a user's overall health, for example, to provide accurate data to a physician or to alert the user if there are disruptions in normal patterns of bodily fluid discharge.
For example, menstrual issues and patterns of discharge are one of the most common reasons for a woman to see a doctor. Generally, a doctor's first response will be for the woman to keep a “menstrual diary” as a record of the period dates, length of periods, flow, etc. Menstruation that departs from a normal monthly cycle, such as lasting longer or shorter than usual or not occurring at all, may indicate an underlying health issue. For example, abnormally long menstrual bleeding may indicate irregularities such as polyps, fibroids, cancer or infection within the uterus or cervix. A number of conditions may be revealed from menstrual flow data: dysmenorrhea (painful periods); oligomennorhoea (irregular periods); amenorrhea (lack of periods); and menorrhagia (heavy periods).
The location of a personal hygiene product is able to gather internal and external biometric data such as temperature or pH. Menstruation, for example, also includes discharge with biometric information. The process of monthly menstruation involves process in which uterus sheds the endometrium to allow a new lining to replace it. Menstrual fluid is comprised of a uterine blood, meaning the endometrial tissue, vaginal secretions, and cervical fluids. Menstrual fluid also includes information such as hormones such as estrogen and progesterone and enzymes related to pregnancy such as hydrolytic enzymes and lysosomes.
In the home health setting, for example, individuals receive periodic check-ups by home health staff ranging from multiple times daily to weekly. Isolated visits may not capture or accurately give warning if an individual has additional health issues if those issues do not present during a check-up. The valuable biometrics that may be gleamed from a personal hygiene product would accurately convey extensive data that if available electronically to a health professional would provide a more accurate and holistic understanding of the patient's health. Additionally, a personal hygiene product with a digital element may facilitate remote monitoring either by a health care professional or family member.
The proper combination of a personal hygiene product incorporated with a digital element capable of interfacing with a smart hand held electronic device would meet the ultimate needs of personal hygiene product consumers. The digital element needs to biocompatible and comprised of an array capable of wireless communication. Accordingly, there exists a need for providing a personal hygiene product capable of gathering, processing, and communicating data about the product's absorbent capacity and individual user's bodily fluid discharge to smart hand held electronic device of a user. There are also exists a need for an individual user to be able to interface with the data once communicated to the smart hand held electronic device.